Posting awareness reading and interesting.
Western Wind Energy Corp. has filed two petitions in the Supreme Court of British Columbia seeking to identify a pair of Stockhouse users known as "j_mart" and "patheticnews." The company complains about posts they wrote that called Western Wind's chief executive officer, Jeff Ciachurski, a crook and a stock manipulator. Western Wind is seeking a court order that will compel Stockhouse to provide IP addresses or any other identifying information for the posters.
The company filed the two nearly identical petitions (one for each user) on Thursday, May 17, at the Vancouver courthouse, naming Stockhouse Publishing Ltd. as the respondent. In them, Western Wind contends that posts appearing under the names j_mart and patheticnews on Stockhouse between Dec. 16, 2011, and April 30, 2012, were defamatory. The messages, which are quoted in affidavits attached to the petitions, mostly spoke about Mr. Ciachurski.
One by j_mart on April 24 stated, "Maybe cardinal was right when he said jeffy was trying to steal the company ... ." That post came five weeks after another j_mart post, which read, "when he was on BNN he said he wanted a listing on NASDAQ and said he would get the share price up shortly to get listed, you cant believe a friggin thing that comes out of this guys mouth ... ."
Another set of posts referred to a potential takeover offer Western Wind received from Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. that ultimately went nowhere. (In October, 2011, Western Wind said it had received a $2.50-per-share takeover offer from Algonquin Power. The deal, however, was only at the discussion stage, according to Algonquin Power. That company later said it was no longer interested in Western Wind.)
The potential takeover was mentioned in a Feb. 22, 2012, post by j_mart, which stated: "Is management not concerned with the low share price?, before the AQN offer was made they didn't care about the low share price, but all of a sudden they were concerned when the AQN offer was made and since AQN went away they again don't seem to care... something stinks here!"
An even earlier j_mart post, on Jan. 7, 2012, referred to management manipulating the company. It read: "Hey jeffy! Why don't you enlighten us on that big acquisition, some decisions must have been made by now, and have you heard anything about who might have been manipulating the share price! (I'm starting to wonder if its not WND management, they sure don't seem to be promoting this thing) and what's going on with the SIB, was that true, is it going to happen? Or more B.S?"
The company complains that the j_mart posts were clearly defamatory. They implied that Mr. Ciachurski is "dishonest, trying to steal the company, a crook, incompetent and intentionally manipulating [the] stock price."
The messages by the other poster, patheticnews, appeared more recently, on April 30, 2012. They implied some sort of improper dealings with the purchase of a property in California, the petition claims.
One read: "Anybody realize yet that the principles of the company have ripped their shareholders in buying the Techachapi California land from the company executives who owned it. Talk about a breach of trust. It is all public record for anyone who wants to know just how all these people paid themselves and their tax arrears by having you and Grennbrier buy their land from them. Where is the SEC, TSX, etc. etc. ?"
Western Wind says those posts "contained language which is defamatory ... in that it would tend to diminish the reputation of the Petitioners in the minds of right thinking members of society."
At the time of the posts, Stockhouse required authors to register for an account. In registering, they may have entered personal information such as an e-mail addresses or names. Stockhouse may also be in possession of IP addresses or other identifying information, the petitions state.
Western Wind is asking that the court order Stockhouse to turn over that information. Stockhouse has not yet responded to the petitions and, according to Western Wind, does not plan to contest the case. Vancouver lawyer Andrew Aguilar of McMillan LLP filed the petitions on behalf of Western Wind and Mr. Ciachurski.
Stockhouse has removed all the posts that the petitions complain of.
Western Wind closed at $1.59 on Thursday, down four cents.
